Months ago, when a bunch of “foreigners” came to meet Nileema Mishra, she considered it as just another visit by people who wanted to see her work. But later, when the group closely started vetting her work at the Bhagini Nivedita Gramin Vigyan Niketan (BNGVN), an organisation she started in 1995, it got Mishra concerned. Without divulging much, the group’s members just said they were in the drought-prone Bahadurpur village of Maharashtra’s Jalgaon district to study the work pattern of her organisation. A few days ago, they wrote to her, saying she was one of the winners of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for 2011.   “As a policy, we don’t apply for any award or fellowship. We realised a former recipient had recommended my name. On knowing it was Prakash Amte, I am just humbled,” Mishra told The Indian Express over phone from Bahadurpur.   Mishra, 39, belongs to the seventh generation of an Uttar Pradesh family that had migrated to this village. “In search of jobs, my family had come to Jalgaon. But the parched village made social activists out of them. My father recalls how my ancestors brought schools, roads, temples to the village. My entry into the social sector was only expected,” she said.   With no definitive work style, her organisation works on each issue that women come to them with. “My professors had suggested I should work for women. I interviewed every woman who walked up to us and spoke of their issues — illness, food, education. But all seemed connected to one problem — poverty. So it was decided that we have to generate employment,” she said.   Starting with just 12 volunteers, Nileema’s work today has reached 200 villages, where women produce export-quality quilts. “The otherwise traditional women, confined to their homes, have now become productive, articulate, and confident in their ability to think for themselves,” said Nileema with pride.   Nileema believes her group has helped her village immensely through its five-year-old intervention in the issue of farmer suicides. Since 2006, BNGVN has managed to help 47 farmers get their land back from landlords. “It’s a give-and-take relationship. When we offer help, we ask them to work towards making the village an ideal village, where no pesticide would be used in farming, no woman would be beaten up by husband, no family would seek help from a landlord for daughters’ marriage,” she said.